


Happy Returns

by archea2



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Diego Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Gen, Good Brother Luther Hargreeves, Hurt Diego Hargreeves, Hurt/Comfort, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-06 22:25:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19071913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archea2/pseuds/archea2
Summary: Luther’s hands change the pack; brush against the older scar, a featherlightsorryto Diego’s years of solitude and superglue.





	Happy Returns

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Electra_XT](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Electra_XT/gifts).



> Dear Electra_XT,
> 
> A quick homage to your fics, which I love. Hope you like it!

“Hey,” Luther says with a frown. It does not take a maths boffin to count six people in a room, the counter included. “Where’s Diego?”

Klaus looks up from his knitting and waves. Ben, whose newly-solid hands are trapped in skeins of magenta wool, nods.

“With...you?” Five ventures. “Weren’t you supposed to pick up the champagne?” He speaks in audibly salt-and-vinegar tones, having been banned from “popping in and out” the liquor store, both on ethical grounds and lest he stumble under the crate and crash the booze.

“We were. I did.” Luther smiles over to Vanya as she floats each champagne bottle into the cooler stationed under Five’s wing. The evening is a high water mark - the first anniversary of their joined effort to lay the ghosts of oldentime trauma to rest - and it was Vanya’s idea to make it a family do. “He was to pick me up at the store and drive me home, but, uh…”

“Awww, it happens to the best of us.” Klaus taps his knitting needle to Luther’s now empty arm. “Chin up, big guy. Next time, _you_ stand him up when he asks for help getting the Alka Setzer out of the top drawer or something.”

“He’s allergic to aspirin,” Allison says, crossing into the family circle with a tray of glass flutes, pat when Luther is asking, “You think he needs help?”

Suddenly, the  chill in the room no longer stems from the cooler.

"Oh no," Vanya says, while the glass flutes bump sides in a clatter.

“He _promised_ ,” Ben tells the skeins.

They all promised. Their first care, once Vanya on the mend and Harold Jenkins rumored to have devoted his youthful cult to the Royal British Academy, had been to hold a family rehab wake. They had come clean, one after the other - verbally.  Diego’s poison, that dark cocktail of adrenalin, insomnia, and whack-a-felon kicks, had been the last outed. It had not been easy - the poison had come out kicking and screaming, then kicking and stuttering - but come out it had.

There had been a breakdown. There had been a long, private talk between Luther and Diego, the gist of which never transpired. It had, however, kindled further and remarkable exchanges, such as Luther asking Diego for dancing lessons and Diego offering to act as Luther's chaperone at the local nightclubs. There had been an interview with Diego’s former trainers. There had been quite a jackpot of second chances.

Ever since, a seasoned rookie with a graduation on the line, Diego has minded every curfew. Stoically, if scowlingly.  

Until tonight.

“Guys, guys. For all we know, he met a really _knife_ girl on the way home and got a little, ahem, detained. Lu, what say you we open the -”

Which is when the Academy portal shuts with a loud click.

 

* * *

 

Luther has _one_ idea where to drive. It gets him to a dim-lit alley with no room for the thick-framed van he bought with his share of Dad's money, so he has to double-park.

“I double-parked,” he tells Al - yelling since he must. Al’s audience is in hot in debate over the current round, but the eponymous owner only nods, wide-eyed. “Is my brother here? _Is_ he? Why didn’t you call me?”

Al only points a thumb to the ring. “Kinda kept my eyes on the prize fighters, pal.”

Luther drops him to his feet and pushes his way through the ruckus, shoulder first. The crowd yields like butter, but it is heavy with the scent of blood, perspiration and the oily musk of all-male fervour, and Luther is glad to find himself in the cooler, deserted stairs.

Yet there is no light to help him down, not even a splinter under the door leading to Diego’s old burrow. With the darkness comes a pang. What if he got it wrong? What if Diego isn't here, isn't home, and Luther really doesn't know where to find him? He should have taken Five with him instead of bolting out on a head rush. Five is the wiser man. Five would have found Die -

The groan breaking into his pang is low, but unmistakable. Luther's step morphs into a leap, that lands him through the door and into the boiler room, an inch away from the shadow half lying, half sitting up on the floor. He gropes for the lights. Cold packs have cascaded out of Diego’s fridge and between Diego's parted legs, and Diego is trying to grasp one, only for the pack to slip back between his fingers. Luther’s pulse curdles in his throat when he sees why.

“Diego!”

Diego’s own breath is loud and fractured, but he does turn his head when Luther drops next to him. “Not mine,” he says. “Got him first - after he let go of her.”

“Her?” Luther prises the blood-slick hands loose, gently, placing one on his own knee and moulding it around the solid curve so Diego has something to hold to. He takes Diego’s chin in his hand and coaxes it sideway. If there's an opposite to deja vu, then it's what Luther is feeling - a mix of strangeness and regret, the aching consciousness of a first that should be a habit, acquired long ago. The light makes visible the thin white line parting Diego’s temple, the stigma that Diego keeps history-less, refusing to tell Luther if it dates back to more than four years ago. It crosses into another - fresh, swollen, more bump than dent. Luther picks up the pack and puts it in Diego's hand, enveloping it with his before he lifts their hands to the wound. 

“Tell me,” he says, and it's a testimony to the year that Diego doesn't balk at the imperative.

“Old story, bad old song.” Diego's voice is clipped, but focused enough. “Had a van, like yours. Must have told the kid he’d hit a dog and - and needed help taking it to the vet. Instead, he was taking her.” The shock of cold has Diego shut his eyes, and Luther acts on instinct; cradles his brother’s groan, his brother's head to his chest. Diego is not wearing his holster - he _was_  driving to their usual store, then, taking the back alleys to avoid the late-night traffic.

“Claire’s age.” The next words are poised between anger and a whisper. “Got him good.”

“Good,” Luther echoes. He let a few seconds run, until the word sinks in and Diego abandons more of his weight to the hug. Luther’s hands change the pack; brush against the older scar, a featherlight  _sorry_ to Diego’s years of solitude and superglue.

“Do you need... you know...” Luther swallows, tiptoeing around the query. "I could come with you."

There is no answer, which in itself is answer enough. Diego hates hospitals with a passion. Hates all things IV and the kindness of strangers, hates the very notion of hands, not Mom's, bestowing a foreign intimacy upon him. Allison had to write him up on her own insurance when he joined the ranks again.

“Doctors - nosy bunch,” he mutters at last. The scowl is back, another mask for Diego’s deep-seated insecurities. He is still treading that scar-thin line between law and impulse, and although Luther knows that Diego fights from the heart, always did, the general public and Diego’s minders would not take kindly to the _how_ of his fights.

“S-s-some anniversary,” Diego whispers, as if their closeness opened a trench into Luther’s thoughts. “I slipped, brother.”

Luther struggles for variants of _I don’t hold it against you_ that won't fuel the temptation. Instead, he holds Diego. He can feel that secret chart of muscles shifting, proof that Diego is - old story, too - tensing up against Luther's judgement.

(It's only been a year, after all.)

"Mmmh,” he says, and then, “Am I supposed to hydrate you?”

“What, with a watering can? It’s a bump, Luther, not a rose tree.” Diego tries for an eye roll; grunts consequently. “There's water on the top shelf.”

Eerily reminded of Klaus’s words, Luther reaches up. Diego will not submit to the indignity of being fed a bottle; but he's woozy enough that he will let Luther hold his elbow steady. He drinks slowly, avidly, only pulling back when he's done. Under the light, his face is still haggard, not only - Luther realizes - from the aftershock, but with the onset of a plea.

“We need to go home. The others - they’ll be wondering where you are.”

“Where _we_ are. All right. Look - it’s up to you, what you tell them. But tomorrow, once you’re rested... we talk.”

“I don’t need to -”

Luther angles his head; drops a kiss on the cropped head. Diego, predictably startled, leaves the denial hanging.

“Me or Klaus. Your choice. Remember - I’m the laconic one.”

Diego rattles a groan, but hobbles to his feet.

 

* * *

 

“I give you... our heroes!” Allison says, popping the first cork out with her usual quick-gestured grace. “Plural.”

“Did you carry him all the way home? Bridal style? _Please_ say it was bridal and make my night.”

“Unlikely,” Ben says, “considering the van.”

“But pray, what’s the use of a super strong bro if he can’t U-bear you home? U-bear. Uber. That’s a pun, by the way.”

“You win,” Diego mutters in Luther’s ear. “How early tomorrow?”

“I’ll let you sleep in,” Luther whispers back. He thinks of Claire, warmly tucked into her mom’s bed upstairs, and adds, “Save you some bubbly, too.”

“Happy anniversary, guys,” Vanya says shyly. “Many happy returns - you know.”

“Preferably in one piece,” Five adds.

“To our next year,” Diego says. He’s got an ice pack in one hand, a Tylenol tablet in the other, and Luther at his side, a glass of water waiting engulfed in his hand, and, to Diego's baffled joy - he believes it.


End file.
